Re: Thrust driven swing wing
I agree that having folding/swing wings would allow longer wings and a better glide ratio but I still don't think that the added complexity and risk would be worth it because it's not going to be doing much gliding anyway. At the proposed altitude you'd not only need unfeasibly long, high-aspect ratio wings, but a pretty high airspeed as well, to gain sufficient lift for a meaningful glide.
I'm afraid I don't understand a couple of your other comments: "Having ailerons would also mean you don't need a V tail...". A V-tail doesn't replace ailerons but just reduces the number of flight/control surfaces in the tail empennage by combining the horizontal stabilisors with the fin i.e. two surfaces instead of three. Yes, you then need to mix the pitch control with the rudder control, but that's not rocket science.
Then: "plus I've seen models land safely after losing one of their elevators completely. Little harder, especially for an autopilot, to do that after getting a whole wing torn off". Do you mean the entire hstab on one side was lost, or just the elevator on one side? In either case, as long as the remaining hstab/elevator retains enough control authority then it'll still be controllable, albeit not as controllable as as you'd like (the A-10 was designed to be flyable after losing one entire hstab & rudder). But why would one of LOHAN's wings get torn off? And if one wing is torn off then you're going to be stuffed anyway (although I've heard one story of a Japanese F-15 that managed to land after getting _most_ of one wing torn off in a collision).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
